Italian Finance Police Acquire Modica Records Over Earmarked Flood-Defence Funds

The Guardia di Finanza has acquired documents from Modica town hall in connection with five Interior Ministry grants worth a combined €5m for hydrogeological risk mitigation, after close to €1m recorded as earmarked funding was put to other uses. According to Ragusa News, the sum at issue is €977,000, described in the municipal papers as advances paid by the ministry to the comune in 2020 across the five interventions. Ragusa Oggi reports that the same accounting anomaly recurs in almost identical form in all five cases, and places the spending in the years when Ignazio Abbate led the administration. The documents were taken from Palazzo San Domenico.

The case has been given a political form by Giovanni Spadaro, a city councillor for the Democratic Party, who presented a council question on 30 September 2026, Radio RTM reported. The question concerns five managerial determinations numbered 1741 to 1745 of 2026, providing for the rectification, reduction and revocation of spending commitments financed by the Interior Ministry. According to the same account, the projects were originally tied to funds granted by the Viminale in 2019 for a total of about €5m. Ragusa News instead places the arrival of the sums in 2020; the supplied accounts do not reconcile the two dates.

As described, the administrative acts carry concrete consequences: reductions in expenditure and definitive stops to works the question identifies as crucial. The €977,000 figure attaches specifically to the advances, while the five grants together total roughly €5m. The anomaly set out in the reporting is structural rather than a single transaction — sums bound to one purpose, recorded as invested in another, repeated across five separate interventions.

The dossier remains at the stage of document acquisition by the Guardia di Finanza and a pending council question. No charge, indictment or judicial outcome is reported in the supplied material, and it contains no statement from the Interior Ministry or from Abbate. Nor do the accounts indicate when a response to the question is expected, or whether the commitments reduced or revoked under the 2026 determinations will be reinstated.